Field
This disclosure is generally related to routers. More specifically, this disclosure is related to using an ordered-element name, which includes fixed-length elements, to forward an interest for a content item.
Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and mobile-related Internet services continue to fuel revolutionary changes in the network industry. Today, a significant number of information exchanges, from online movie viewing to daily news delivery, retail sales, and instant messaging, are conducted online, and oftentimes on a mobile computing device. An increasing number of Internet applications are also becoming mobile, while the current Internet operates on a largely location-based addressing scheme. The two most ubiquitous protocols, the Internet Protocol (IP) and Ethernet protocol, are both based on location-based addresses. That is, a consumer of content can only receive the content by explicitly requesting the content from an address (e.g., IP address or Ethernet media access control (MAC) address) closely associated with a physical object or location. This restrictive addressing scheme is becoming progressively inadequate for meeting the ever-changing network demands.
In general, a network device, such as an IP router or Ethernet switch, receives a packet at one of its input ports (e.g., a network interface). The device then performs a lookup to identify an output port to which the packet should be forwarded based on the packet's destination address. An IP router typically uses a longest-prefix-match lookup engine to process an IP address tied to a physical location, whereas an Ethernet switch uses an exact-match lookup engine to process a MAC address tied to a physical device. These devices are not adapted to process a packet based on a name for a piece of content.